HS: Do you want to start off by telling us your name, your degree, and what year you’re in?

AM: Yes, hi, my name’s Adriana Malavisi, I do a Bachelor of Advanced Science, and I’m in my second year.

HS: What’s the name of your campaign and what colour are you running on?

AM: We are running on ‘Reboot’ and we are running on fuschia.

HS: Nice, fuschia, great colour.

AM: Fantastic colour.

HS: Are you in any political factions of a member of any political clubs on campus?

AM: I am a member of Student Unity and a member of the Sydney University ALP club.

HS: Why did you join Unity?

AM: I joined it because it’s a broad church of left wing, progressive ideologies, and I felt very accepted in Unity. Also, I just liked the structure of it, and the pragmatism that goes into every policy.

HS: What kind of ideologies are included in that broad spectrum, which you align with?

AM: Just left wing, progressive politics…

HS: Do you have any examples you can think of?

AM: A lot! Do you want specifics? I mean, I’m like pro-choice, pro-funding of hospitals and schools… I don’t know what you want, sorry.

HS: How long have you been a member of Unity?

AM: I think I joined the party—or the club—last year during OWeek, my first year during OWeek, but I think I might have joined may mid-year last year, my first year.

HS: And are you a member of any political parties?

AM: Yeah, I’m a member of the Labor Party.

HS: Who would you say is your political hero?

AM: My political hero… I don’t know if I have that one person who, you know, drove you to get into politics because I think it was mostly a personal thing, but I’m a very, very big fan of Barack Obama but also that’s just ‘cause he was president when I lived in the US and I was obsessed with him. But yeah, I don’t think I have like the one person who inspired me to get into politics, but there’s a lot of politicians I look up to. Right now in the Labor Party I look up to Michelle Roland, she’s our member for… Why am I forgetting the name of her electorate, oh my god…

HS: It’s okay, that’s alright.

AM: Um, but yeah.

HS: So what are your reasons for running for SRC president? And not ‘I love the SRC’?

AM: I think that cuts me down on options because it is because I do love the SRC, but also because it has actually been the most frustrating part of my life the last nine months of my term. I mean, I do love the SRC, but I haven’t been very happy or impressed with the way it’s been going for the past year or so, and I thought the best way to change that was to put forward my admission for it.

HS: What is your ambition for the SRC?

AM: Reboot as a whole, but mostly me, particularly me, we want an SRC that works for students. I think the SRC has been a bit deviated from what it is supposed to be. a big chunk of its reason for existing, which is representation and advocacy. It does great activism but a lot of the time we forget that we are actually here for students. Because of that there’s been a big disconnect between us and the student population on campus. My vision is making sure that the SRC is engaging in inclusive activism, representative activism, but also making sure that students on our campus and more broadly are being taken care of, their well-being, that we’re actually standing up for issues that they care about as well.

HS: What do you see as the most important function of the SRC?

AM: I don’t think the SRC has a most important function, I think all of its functions are important. It has two sides to it: it’s great for activism, as we all know—and I think activism should always happen in the SRC, it’s the voice for students. But I think sometimes that activism itself is a bit non-representative. One part, which we don’t do enough to focus on, which I think is a very important part—which, to answer your question, I would say is the most important part—is student welfare and support. I think students need an SRC that’s actually there for them. A lot of students don’t know that they can come to casework legal for help or just walk in and ask, ‘Where can I get help with so and so?’ Expanding on the support we need to provide is something we really need to focus on.

HS: Expanding, how?

AM: Many ways. I’m guessing you have my policies, which I’m guessing we’ll get to later, so I won’t dive too deep into those, but expanding through outreach, so stuff like Welfare Week, in which we’re actually out there talking to students saying, ‘Hey, we’re here for you’, having caseworkers out there, talking to students directly, making appointments. And then just looking into the SRC and seeing where can we bring in new ways of helping student, bringing in different kinds of support services.

HS: We may as well jump into the specific policy questions. You want a Welfare Week every semester. Is there anything apart from rebooting the SRC Facebook page and having a Welfare Week every semester that can have more outreach for students?

AM: I think that’s a good start. I think the Facebook page gets a lot of reach…I know that I didn’t advertise Welfare Week a lot, but I did advertise it while it was happening, and it got a lot of reach. The Facebook page is a great way to actually tell students about our services. And I know that SRC Health has their own Facebook page…As far as having one every semester, I think that’s a way of showing students we have a presence to begin with. It lets them know that we’re here, we exist. I know one of the main things that happened during Welfare Week is students coming up to the stall and being, ‘Hey, what’s going on, what is this?’, which is great because we got to tell them. It may not sound like a lot and it may not sound revolutionary but it’s something. Building on that you have a Welfare Week every semester but then you have more smaller events during the semester and I know some of our office bearers are organising stuff like Union Day, and I’m not organising one myself, but it’s a fantastic initiative. It gets us out on Eastern Avenue, which is wonderful.

HS: Just on Welfare Week, that was obviously your big project as vice-president this year. Throughout Welfare Week, there were allegations that the whole thing was handled kind of poorly, volunteers were rostered late, and there were marquees secured only the night before when you had to drive up to Newcastle Uni. How can you sell this vision of being able to manage the ins and outs of the SRC every day when a three day event was pretty chaotic?

AM: Well, I’ll say, organising Welfare Week was definitely an uphill battle but calling it chaotic is a bit much. ‘Cause I know there were a lot of office-bearers who were not on board with it. I did not receive the support from council or from office-bearers that of hoped for. Considering that the initiative was basically student welfare for students—I thought it would be uncontroversial—and it was an uphill battle. As for the marquees, they were not secured overnight. What happened was I organised with the president and staff of the Newcastle University students association about three weeks in advance to borrow their marquees because I was told we wouldn’t have a budget to acquire a tent. So I organised to borrow six marquees. The night before, they called me and said we couldn’t have them. That’s when I did not end up driving to Newcastle Uni, instead ended up driving to Bunnings to buy marquees. So it wasn’t a last minute thing: it had been in the planning, it just fell through—and, still fixed it. As for the volunteers being rostered on late, I’ll cop it. I did do it the weekend before, but that’s because I knew there we a lot of volunteers who had already been rostered on…The volunteer form was up for two weeks in advance, however the roster was created a bit later. All the volunteers still turned out, minus office-bearers who said they would show up. We still had many volunteers who were not even office-bearers or councillors help out. We even had some students rock up one day and say, ‘Hey, what is this, I want to get involved,’ and rock up the next day and help us hand out. So I won’t cop that. It was a bit of an uphill battle, and you can say it was a bit of a mess, but it turned out better than we could have ever expected. I’m proud of how it ran.

HS: Other than Welfare Week, can you walk us through what you have achieved as vice-president this year?

AM: When I came into my role, or at least after I got elected and whatnot, the first thing people told me is, ‘It’s a bludge, you don’t have to do anything,’ and then they were like, ‘Oh, it’s fine, it’s an honorary title,’ which I thought was obscene because I didn’t get involved in the SRC to not do anything, I didn’t get involved for it to be a CD stack, I didn’t get involved to just have the title. I got involved because I genuinely wanted to do something. I decided then that I would take an active role as vice-president. I mean I’ve tried to, as best I could. I’ve had many office-bearers come to me to ask for help with turn-out to their rallies, help with turn-out for the NDA. I’ve gone to as many collective meetings as I could possibly attend. So, no, I haven’t organised any other major events, but I’ve been pretty active. I’ve done my reports, I’ve done as many campaigns as possible, I’ve turned out people to any rally I’ve been asked to turn out to, I’ve volunteered on stalls myself. I’ve done what I could.

HS: It seems like you’ve done a lot in your role as VP but aside from Welfare Week, what kind of organisational experience can you bring to the role of SRC president?

AM: I have a lot of organisational experience, just from other clubs and societies. Maybe not SRC-specific skills but I’ve learned a lot about the SRC in my term. As far as general organising skills, I’ve learned a lot from being on society executives, which I know is a bit different, but the skills I think just flow right through to SRC organising as well. Organising large-scale events, turning out attendees, publicising publications, publicising events, stuff like that.

HS: Looks like you’ve learn a lot about the SRC in that time. What in the last five years do you think is the most important achievement that the SRC has done?

AM: Nothing comes to the top of my mind other than… I just don’t think there has been anything significant for me, maybe I’m missing something… I think that maybe one of the issues that we have… Actually Fisher 24 hours, that happened. Free wifi on campus, that happened. Loan programs, that happened. Making stuff more accessible, that’s happened. But has it happened on a large enough scale?

HS: So has there been action from previous presidents in the past five years that you’ve kind of found inspiring, that you’ve looked at and thought, ‘They’ve done something that I want to build on?’

AM: Something a past president has done that I would want to build on… Well I know Isabella Brook was about welfare and I think, if I were to be elected, that is the type of president I would want to be. I guess that isn’t a specific something I want to follow up on but more of a someone that I would kind of want to use to like inspire me…

HS: Can you name anything that Isabella Brook did other than notionally wanting to help with welfare?

AM: Look, any particular motions or any stuff she specifically did doesn’t come to the top of my head, so I don’t think I can give you specifics.

HS:One of the things you say in your policy statement is, ‘With a strict focus on radical activism, the SRC has lost sight of student-oriented issues.’ This year’s activism has focused on opposing the Ramsay Centre, fighting for international students’ Opal concession, campaigning for USyd to divest from arms and pushing for meaningful action against sexual assault. Do you think these issues are important to students and to you?

AM: I think they’re all very important, I think they’re all incredibly important. But I think the way they’re being campaigned on is not necessarily the right way to do it. Those issues are definitely things we should be addressing, however, I don’t like the way they’re being addressed.

HS: So you think you wouldn’t have committed to organising the protests against them this year?

AM: It’s not about protests, it’s about the rhetoric being used. So, say for the sexual assault on campus campaign, it’s something I am very passionate about. Students deserve a safe campus, all students deserve a safe campus, and it’s something that we do a lot with. But we could be doing a lot more and at a larger scale. One of the things I have been having an issue with is rhetoric like ‘burn the colleges’. That’s what I mean when I say the way it’s being campaigned on rather than the cause itself. I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. That’s what I mean when I say—I think I mentioned in my policy statement—‘activism that alienates parts of the student population it’s supposed to be representing’. Stuff like that or stuff like the Ramsay Centre, where I know so many students are against the Ramsay Centre, but something they’re so struck by the rhetoric being used that it kind of turns them off rallying against the Ramsay Centre. My issue is more with the way these campaigns are structured. It’s not about whether you hold a protest or not—it’s about the way we are running these campaigns rather than the issues we are running them on because I think a lot of the issues are very valid issues, important to students.

HS: So the issue isn’t with the output the SRC is doing, it’s with the way it is being done?

AM: Yep.

HS: If you were to paint us a picture of how you would handle activism differently this year, what kind of rhetoric would you want to use? And can you identity more than just rhetoric, how you would change the way that OBs run their campaigns?

AM: You have a campaign focusing on actually engaging students. You have discussions with regular students who aren’t in the stupol bubble, actually letting them know what’s happening. Having a discussion, not just saying, ‘This is what’s happening, this is why you’re against it,’ but actually discussing. Because I think—and it’s a really cheesy line—but the best way to change things is through changing hearts and minds. Changing the beliefs, the perception of things… Using discussion to rally people for something rather than just pushing them, telling them why it is wrong, including them in the discussion is very important. If you want specifics I can give you specifics, but I think that is one thing I will try to focus on—actually including and engaging students. It’s great to have a protest for something but only if there’s so many people rallying behind it, and it’s powerful because everyone cares so much about it, because they have seen that this is something that benefits students or something that students will not stand for…rather than having the same old hacks turning up to the same old protests over and over again.

HS: So you want to have more discussions with students. Where, when and on what scale do you imagine these discussions to take place?

AM: They can be small scale, they can be large scale. I mean, I hate to bring up Welfare Week again, but discussions like that where a student comes up to you and is like, ‘I’ve had so many issues with special cons, I’ve recently been evicted’ (I’m not even going through specifics, I’m going through my own life right now)! Stuff like that where it’s like, you have those discussions because we’re out there and they just want someone to listen. Or getting more people involved in collectives who wouldn’t usually be. I mean, when I first started uni, because I even knew what the SRC was, I joined the environment collective and a bunch of other collectives, but then stopped showing up because I felt like I was the outsider. So stuff like that where we can be more inclusive. The collectives are great. People care about these issues and want to get involved but they don’t know how, so the collectives are a great way to do that. Having discussions through those and having more… I don’t know what else to say…?

HS: Obviously this is a big part of your policy: to change the way the SRC handles its activism. It sounds nice to engage students in more collectives and stuff and Welfare Week, but Welfare Week only happens once a semester and you can’t really change the rhetoric that happens in collectives unless you go to all of them. Can you give us more detail on how you would actually influence other office-bearers to change their rhetoric? And how you would be able to have more front facing discussions with students regularly?

AM: I’ll answer the first part of the question, which is how I will talk to office-bearers about their rhetoric. I guess it is something that will have to be worked on. I mean obviously a lot of the office-bearers are from autonomous collectives, or a few of them are, and in that sense it would be more about having discussions with them about how we want the SRC to be running these campaigns…Regularly meeting and discussing what our goals are and how we want to achieve them through these campaigns, I think that’s a really important part and I think it doesn’t happen enough. I think there’s a really big disconnect between president, executive, office-bearers and council at the moment. That’s one thing that could help everyone be on the same page: discussing what we want and making sure that we’re running campaigns that we all get behind. The second part of the question was getting office-bearers to engage with students face-to-face, was it…?

HS: I wanted more detail—you mentioned Welfare Week again, but that would only happen once a semester, and the other example you drew on is collectives. Is there anything else that you would want to implement to be able to have those discussions more regularly with students, to actually hear their problems and explain the discussions that you obviously want to have?

AM: Yeah, so, when I brought up Welfare Week I didn’t necessarily mean Welfare Week itself—I mean, of course I meant Welfare Week, but I meant events like Welfare Week, in which we have office-bearers, representatives, volunteers, people that want to get involved out on Eastern Avenue just talking to students. Although it does get annoying to many people walking down Eastern Avenue and being interrupted by someone who wants to hand you a leaflet, there’s always someone willing to stop to talk. Maybe it’s a ‘stop Ramsay’ stall day rather than a ‘stop Ramsay’ protest because that way you can actually talk to the students and get them to protest at a different point, but they actually know what they’re going to. Yeah, so when I say like Welfare Week, I don’t mean specifically Welfare Week once a semester, I mean events like Welfare Week, which are meant to put the SRC out on Eastern Avenue talking to student, which is where we’re meant to be. Things like Rad Ed week, Radical Sex week, which I know we don’t run but you get the point.

HS: One of your other big policies is bringing on specialised lawyers to the legal service and to hire a visa specialist. This is going to be expensive. What are you going to cut from the SRC’s budget to afford it? The SRC only made $250 surplus last year, so something has to give.

AM: Yeah, I agree, and I know it would be expensive. Look, I know that the SRC works on a very low operating budget to begin with because once you get rid of like staff wages, stipends, operating budget, administrative costs, you’re left with very, very little. Yeah you can cut stuff from the budget. I would probably try to re-organise the way collectives are managed. Mostly because I noticed this year, being on the executive, a lot of times we just pass expenditures that we don’t know who we are passing them for. Some collectives are very good in that they will give us their report in advance before doing any expenditure, saying why we need it, what we need, etc., and that’s great. A lot of collective normally give us reports and that way we know where the money is going and it’s justified. Sometimes we end up passing expenditure after, it carries through for weeks on weeks, just because it’s not justified. They just say, ‘reimbursement of so and so amount’, with no explanation—I mean we get a receipt but even then I don’t think it’s enough. Holding these collectives accountable to what they’re spending on, what they’re doing. Also to keep track of what every office-bearer’s doing but specifically for spending…I’m not happy with a lot of the budget this year.

HS: What parts of it are you not happy with?

AM: I’ve expressed this in council but say the environmental collective got $9500 this year, which is a lot more than many, many other collectives. Most of them get $1000-$3000 on average; they got $9500, and we had to approve it because they would send us their invoice after they had already spent the money and we can’t let these office-bearers pay out of pocket. We can’t not reimburse them because they have spent the money, so then we’re stuck in the position where we have to spend the money or not reimburse the office-bearers. A budget where Enviro has given no report back to the executive or to Council… Or Education, which got $20,000, 20.2 [thousand], I believe, where $7000 went to Education Conference and I just don’t know where the rest of it’s going. I know they have budget breakdowns and whatnot but I haven’t seen them and I’m on the executive.

HS: So at the council meeting you asked to be sent the…

AM: Yeah, I never got it.

HS: Did you follow up on it?

AM: Did I message Lily…? I actually can’t remember if I did, sorry.

HS: Maybe collectives are getting more than they need to, but scrounging up the excess dollars that they are getting, do you really think that is enough to fund an entire lawyer and visa specialist?

AM: No, it’s not. That’s where I think we need to come up with more creative ways of getting funding because SSAF allocation has not been good to us. It’s stayed pretty stagnant, we haven’t got any huge increases. Everyone says they are going to negotiate for more, but honestly, how much more is the university going to give us. Ways to do it is just by finding creative ways of getting more funding. I don’t really know what they are, whether it be fundraising or anything like that, and it probably wouldn’t be enough to pay a salary, but those policies are in there because I think it’s something that the SRC desperately needs to explore. Even if we can’t get it this year, even if it wouldn’t happen in my term, I think we need to get it in there. It’s something worth exploring and worth finding the logistics of getting it started, getting the ball rolling, so it does happen at some point. That’s what I would be wanting to do and working very hard to do. Maybe we can’t restructure the budget this year but I’ll try my best to restructure the budget enough to get it to happen this year. It may not happen but it’s something that needs to happen.

HS: I couldn’t find any trace in your policy of creative ways to raise money. Do you think that when you proposed a big ticket policy of hiring a new lawyer, you should have thought about ways and put that in your policy—about how you would raise money creatively?

AM: I didn’t think ‘we’ll raise money creatively’ was such a hot policy but it’s something that I did consider because when I workshopped those policies I did consider, ‘How the hell will I make this happen’. Look, I know they’re big policies, and I call them dreamer policies…But I know that they’re not easy to achieve, it’s not something that’s going to happen the second I get into office, right…But I’m willing to work my arse off to figure out a way to get these policies, and that’s what I was promising when I wrote the policies. So yeah, there’s nothing in the policy book about ‘funding creatively’, but that’s because there is no other way to fund these.

HS: You are not happy with the way the budget was created or passed this year. So next year, say you have a general secretary who wants to implement similar like gives lots of money to collectives, how would you be able to ensure that you as president have the influence and the ability to make sure that the budget kind of goes your way.

AM: Look that would depend a lot with my relationship with the general secretary, I guess, whoever it is. But, in the end, I think if we were to cut collective budgets it wouldn’t be controversial if it wasn’t going to something that wasn’t equally beneficial to students to more beneficial to students. So I think in that sense just discussing with the general secretary or hashing out exactly what each of us wants so we can either achieve a middle ground or find a way that would balance out either both their preferences and mind. Look I can’t force the general secretary to make the budget that I want, obviously, but no one can.

HS: In terms of financial management, during the August council meeting you questioned why general secretary Nina Dillon Britton didn’t allocate money to Welfare Week. Nina said that you hadn’t put in a request for money despite all office-bearers being asked to do so well in advance. If you’re elected, how can we trust that you’ll be able to deal with spending on a day-to-day basis?

AM: …Well actually I don’t even remember if I was the one who asked why Welfare Week didn’t get an allocation, that was another councillor, but that’s beside the point. First of all, I’ve never got an email or any notice that budget requests had been taken at all. Another reason I didn’t pursue a budget is because weeks prior to any budget even existing I met with Imogen to ask her what type of budget Welfare Week could possibly look at, this is why I was still planning stalls and whatnot, and I left the meeting with the answer that I could get up to 500 if I wanted to buy snacks or something, which I wasn’t happy with but, you know, if there’s no budget there’s no budget. So that’s why I didn’t apply for a budget, because I knew what’s the point, buying snacks can just be reimbursed from the central council pool. A few weeks later the welfare department asked to include Welfare Week in their budget but by then it was too late to get stalls or anything substantial that actually required a budget so I just let it fall through. So, to answer your question, in that sense yes. So, honestly, to answer your question, my financial management isn’t shown very well in that scenario, because I was told from the very beginning that I wouldn’t able to spend any money on it. Radical Education Week got no spot in the budget, it was not allocated funds from the budget, it took most of its money from the council pool, only 500 from Education, which is the collective it should have taken it from, considering it’s Radical Education Week, so I don’t know why Welfare Week was any different.

HS: If you had been president this year and but been DSPing Honi, would you have stopped Jay Tharappel’s article from going to print that people have said was pro-North Korean?

AM: I think so, yes.

HS: You would have? On what grounds?

AM: Well it’s just come out that he is quite a well-known—has shown—sentiments of anti-semitism. And I think it’s just a ridiculous article. It’s a puff piece for North Korea. Defectors have shown accounts of human rights abuses and the piece that was written was just a misperception of everything and a puff piece for a regime that shouldn’t be.

HS: So you would exercise editorial control over Honi Soit then? Cause in terms of the DSP duty, the main point is to avoid defamation and to protect the SRC from defamation. This article isn’t something that would likely get the SRC sued but obviously the president can and has intervened in past years. Would you intervene, knowing that it was not likely to inspire legal action against us?

AM: Look, I think I would, but if I was in the position where I thought maybe I wouldn’t fully intervene then I would definitely push the editorial team to reconsider, but I think I would.

HS: Would there be any other kind of article that you think you would draw a line on?

AM: Can’t think of any off the top of my head, other than that have been published so far. It would be a case by case basis, I guess.

HS: In terms of your political affiliation, you’re a member of the Labor Party. Would you say you agree with most the views that the Labor Party holds?

AM: I would say I agree with a lot of the views that the Labor Party holds.

HS: And do you support mandatory offshore detention?

AM: Are you asking my personal beliefs or my faction’s beliefs?

HS: Your personal beliefs as a candidate for president?

AM: Are you asking very presidential candidate that question?

HS: We’re asking them based on political affiliation.

AM: Ok. I don’t know how my own personal beliefs in this scenario would come into play because in the end the president speaks for the council, so regardless of what my personal beliefs are, I would speak on whatever motions the council has passed, which, in the past, many are against offshore processing and detention. In that sense, I would take the position of the council. I think my personal beliefs don’t factor into it but if you need to know, I’m not for it.

HS: We ask that question just so students know who they are voting for and what their politics are.

AM: Personally, I’m not.

HS: Jumping back to your policies then, in one of them you write that you wish to achieve easier special consideration for students facing financial hardship.

AM: Look, I haven’t set out step by step who I’m going to talk to, when I’m going to do it, type thing, so I can’t give you overly specific things, but I mean I think that the special consideration system altogether can be more compassionate, and I think that just comes through pushing the university to understand that students struggle, and that impacts what you can do at uni, that impacts your entire life. So I guess actually pushing the university, lobbying them, until they do. Another thing is standardising simple extension across all faculties. It’s not listed in my policy but yeah.

HS: Would you prefer them to raise everything to the highest standard, for example if the highest standard is 10% would you prefer everything to be raised to 10%?

AM: Wait, what do you mean?

HS: Wait were you talking about?—

AM: Simple extensions.

HS: Simple extensions, right, not late penalties.

AM: Where you can instead of going through the official special considerations process some faculties offer a way that you can email your unit coordinator for a two day extension, but a lot of them, a lot of the science and engineering faculties don’t allow that at all and you have to go through special cons for everything, which makes it a lot more stressful for students, so I think standardising it.

HS: So talked a bit about pushing the university, lobbying them…How much do you think you can really achieve by lobbying and what kind of experience would you say you have in influencing decision-makers to change their decision making?

AM: As far as how much I think I can actually achieve by lobbying I think you can achieve a lot, and I think part of it comes down to fixing the relationship we actually have with the uni because at the moment they are very reluctant to listen to us just because of the relationship the SRC has had with university management over the past year. So working to actually work constructively with the uni on these issues, pushing them to fix what we think needs to be fixed, but actually working it out in a way that is constructive for both sides so that we are actually achieving these things. And as far as experience, I’ve never negotiated for a $1.8 million organisation before so, you know, I don’t know who has experience in that at this point, but I can be quite persuasive.

HS: So what kind of experience in leadership would you draw upon?

AM: I mean, I have a lot of experience in leadership. I’m on several society executives, I try to take a leadership role in the council, I’ve had a lot of leadership roles in the past—you can have my CV if you want.

HS: Just a final question, you do have an accent, are you an international student?

AM: I’m not an international student, I half grew up in the US, from when I was ten onwards, and then I moved here for uni.

HS: Is there anything else you wanted to add to the interview?

AM: Nothing I can think of.

This is a full transcript of an Honi Soit candidate interview. Some sentences have been edited for clarity.

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We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. The University of Sydney – where we write, publish and distribute Honi Soit – is on the sovereign land of these people. As students and journalists, we recognise our complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous land. In recognition of our privilege, we vow to not only include, but to prioritise and centre the experiences of Indigenous people, and to be reflective when we fail to be a counterpoint to the racism that plagues the mainstream media.